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... that thinking process disease known as "hardening of the categories. " This becomes a special problem when the knowledge is focused in a small specialty area, because the breadth of alternative information that could be used in creative synthesis is missing. Creative Leaders Are Original Thinkers Original thinking is not the same as creativity but is obviously prerequisite for creative thought. Originality requires an active search for the different. This may involve deliberate attempts to conjure contrasts, opposites, bizarre associations, symbolic thinking.
Original thinking is sometimes no more than mere recognition that what is accepted by everybody else has flaws, is not adequate, or needs to be done differently. To complete the creative process, however, requires more than originality. Original thoughts that are not examined critically cannot be refined into useful and correct concepts; less creative people tend to be too quick to judge or reject ideas. Creative people think out carefully what they are looking for, and they clarify the reasons for their reactions to emerging ideas. They tend to search longer for original thoughts that can improve upon or even replace the emerging ideas.
Creative Leaders Ask (the Right) Questions A question calls forth an answer; a problem, its solution. The trick is not only to ask questions, but to ask questions or pose problems in the most effective ways. A question can easily limit creative thinking if it restricts the space of potential answers. It therefore is important to pose questions in open-ended ways and ways that do not make too many assumptions about an acceptable answer.
A major part of the creativity task is proper formulation of the problem itself. Creative Leaders Are Prepared To Be Creative What this means is that creative people have a mind-set that enables creativity to happen, as if by chance. We have all heard the famous axiom: Chance favors the prepared mind. -- Pasteur But the more complete explanation is: Accident arises out of purpose... The essence of invention isn't process, but purpose. -- Perkins In other words, creative people: 1. desire to be creative, 2. believe that there is a creative solution, and 3.
expect that they will be the ones to find it. Some Characteristics of the Creative Person Are Innate We know that creative people are self-directed, self-starting. Creativeness of scientists and engineers, as explicitly examined in the study by Pelz and Andrews, was found in those workers who maintained distinctive work styles and strategies. To some extent, the attributes that foster creativity are innate, and cannot be "trained. " For example, one evaluation of several studies of highly creative physical scientists revealed the following common denominators indicating that creative scientists were most likely to be [ 8 ] 1.
men, 2. intensely masculine in interests and outlook, 3. from a background of radical Protestantism, 4. not very religious themselves, 5. reticent about interpersonal contact, 6. disturbed by complex human emotions, especially aggression, 7.
hardworking, to the point of obsession, 8. music lovers, while disliking art and poetry, and 9. interested in analysis and structure of things. Can We Expect Leaders To Make a Difference The creative ability of any given individual ranges from little to great. All professionals have some creative ability, but creative acts cannot occur in a vacuum. Creators must identify a problem, must be motivated to solve it, and must know at least some "facts" (but not too many) about the problem.
They must criticize and refine their ideas to make them amenable to developing an innovative concept, process, or product. In one study of the creative, innovative process, 115 senior scientists were evaluated for their native creative ability by a special psychological test for creativeness (the "RAT" test). [ 9 ] Some personal characteristics, such as innate creative capability and verbal intelligence quotients (IQs), were clearly NOT related to innovative ness. The analyst thus concluded that what really counted was the environment in which innovation is supposed to occur. Taking the Plunge- - How Do We Get Started? "O. K. " the Boss says, "I am convinced we need to change our leadership style to foster creativity, but where do we start?" For starters, look around to see how other organizations have been successful in generating new ideas. Scientists in Organizations [ 10 ] Pelz and Andrews summarize their findings on the effect of management practices on the productivity of over 1, 300 scientists and engineers in 11 government and industrial laboratories.
A composite productivity score for each scientist and engineer was determined by taking into account the number of publications and patents and the ratings assigned by a panel of colleagues on their contribution to the organization, as well as their more general contribution to science and technology. These scores were then used to compute correlation coefficients for the relationship of productivity score to various managerial practices. The analysis allowed them to identify many management practices that foster creativity and innovation, as well as interfering practices. In Search of Excellence [ 11 ] This best-seller was published in 1982 by T.
J. Peters and R. H. Waterman, Jr. This book was based on the authors' analysis of management in dozens of high-tech, Fortune 500 companies that were especially well known for their ability to develop many new and widely accepted products. Such companies included IBM, 3 M, GE, Boeing, and Hewlett-Packard.
Peters and Waterman started with the premise that these companies "must be doing something right, " and they wanted to find out what it was. They found some common denominators that these companies use to foster creativity and innovation. All these companies have built-in management mechanisms to stimulate individual entrepreneurs to take the lead in generating new ideas and pursuing them to the new product or service stage. The entrepreneurs "champion" their own cause and recruit fellow enthusiasts to a development team. Often the team is assigned an expediter whose function it is to cut red tape and provide needed logistical and other support. Typically there is an "executive champion" of the development team who has enough clout in the hierarchy to shield the team from administrative harassment or disruption.
Both of the above-mentioned studies make it clear that creativity and innovation are not beyond the control of enlightened leaders. Although leaders cannot create genius where it does not exist, there are many practices that influence creativity and innovation, for better or for worse. Greasing the Wheels of This Creative Machinery The self is a growing thing, battered into shape by all sorts of forces. -- R. B.
MacLeod The creative self is also a growing thing, amenable to influence of the environment and self-education. [ 12 ] Leaders have more control over the creative process than they think. First, if they know what kinds of people are more creative, they can make it a point to hire such people. With people already on board, leaders can educate them as to what creativity entails and show them that some degree of creativity is within the grasp of everybody. Finally, there is a host of management practices that create the work environment that enables creativity.
Create the Right Environment - Creativity Is Contagious Although we may not fully understand the processes of creativity, we know that they are "contagious. " Certain environments contain something that enhances the creativity process. Hans Krebs, [ 13 ] the Nobel prize-winning biochemist, has worked out the "scientific genealogies" of certain famous scientists. Krebs himself had a Nobel Laureate teacher, Otto Warburg, who in turn was taught by Emil Fischer, who won a Nobel for his work on the chemistry of sugars. Fischer in turn was a pupil of another Laureate, Adolph von Baeyer, who won the prize for work on chemistry of dyes. Adolph von Baeyer's mentor was Reinhard Kekule van Stradonitz, famous for studies on organic compounds with ring structures. Kekule was a pupil of Justus von Liebig, who is the acknowledged "father" of organic chemistry.
Liebig's teacher was a giant in the field of inorganic chemistry, Joseph-Louis Gay-Lussac, who discovered many of the gas laws. Gay-Lussac was a pupil of Claude Louis Berthollet, who helped to introduce the concept of combustion and elucidated the chemistry of such compounds as chlorine, ammonia, and cyanide. Berthollet's mentor was the famous Antoine Laurent Lavoisier. Thus, this family tree of teacher and pupil extended in an unbroken chain over 200 years.
The contagion of creative fever can also be seen in industrial laboratories; the famous Bell Labs are a good example. Bell has had seven of its scientists to receive the Nobel Prize. There are not many single work environments that have spawned such fundamental innovations as the transistor, the laser, and fiber-optics. But the creative atmosphere at Bell is not limited to spectacular innovation. The staff at Bell has acquired over 31, 800 patents since the lab was formed in 1925, and the current rate is about one patent every day! [ 14 ] Expect Creativity Innovation correlates strongly with a person's perception of whether or not he is expected to be innovative. [ 15 ] When leaders shoulder the burden of responsibility for innovation, the workers shirk it.
In part this may be because such environments may actually discourage or penalize workers for innovation. Challenge People Without challenge, there is not enough stimulus to elicit creative responses. But too much challenge burdens and overwhelms the emotions and the mind, shutting off the capacity for creative thought. Ever notice how some of your best ideas occur when you are NOT working, even when you are on vacation? Most creativity theorists believe that it is important, even essential, to have an intense and sustained grappling with a problem if creative solutions are to emerge, but often the flash of insight will only occur when you stop thinking about the problem.
In terms of leadership practices, Pelz and Andrews concluded from their study that a certain amount of "creative tension" had to exist between the conflicting states of worker security and challenge. They noted particularly that scientists' and engineers' productivity increased when the laboratory changed established patterns or when technical disputes arose. Productivity also increased when the scientists and engineers were given positive reinforcement and were encouraged to participate in policy-making. Peters and Waterman found that the best high-tech companies instituted management practices that were deliberately designed to stimulate competition, sometimes even to the extent of assigning the same problem to two different teams and creating a contest atmosphere to see who would come up with the best solution.
Get Some Kind of Peer Review The ultimate goal of the true professional is to be respected by his peers. If there is no way for professionals to know how they stand in the opinion of their peers, an important incentive for doing their best work is also absent. Where peer review programs do exist, they often are administered in very negative ways, where the emphasis is judgmental and punitive. The real purposes should be to specify what is considered high achievement and who is doing it, to reassure workers that they will be judged on merit and technical productivity rather than on ancillary or political grounds, and to stimulate all workers to "keep up the pace. " Get a System of Rewards for Creativity When workers know that management rewards new ideas, they will try to generate them. The best way that management can make its wants known, and believable, is to provide tangible rewards for new ideas.
Rewards can take the usual forms, ranging from more money (bonuses or salary increments) to a wide variety of "perks. " More subtle, and less expensive, devices include arranging for professionals to present their ideas in semiformal gatherings of peers and superiors. It is particularly important to give direct access to policymakers, not only for the ego-gratifying effect on the workers, but also because this is the one way to ensure that policymakers keep informed and stimulated. Professionals may need frequent prodding to produce reports or papers that bear their name. Nonetheless, such efforts produce a positive feedback that will stimulate the worker to future creative activity. Pelz and Andrews found that scientist and engineer productivity was stimulated when the workers knew that their ideas and work were evaluated by people other than their immediate supervisor, particularly people outside the hierarchy or high in it. Evaluations by peers and end users had great impact on motivating scientists and engineers when they knew that higher management sought and listened to such evaluations.
Get People Involved, Immersed, In Problems Numerous anecdotes concerning great creative achievements have in common the feature that the discoverer was deeply immersed in the problem area. [ 16 ] Even Einstein had grappled for several years trying to clarify the relation of movement to electromagnetism. Not surprisingly, the best ideas have usually come in the fields that the discoverer knew a great deal about. There is a paradox here; knowledge often gets in the way of creativity. Professionals who are overly specialized as a group are less productive than are their more broadly based colleagues. [ 17 ] I suspect that the paradox exists because the creative person takes a different, more detached and uncommitted attitude toward his or her knowledge, whereas the non creative person is more inclined to believe what he or she "knows. " Without direction and specific goals, research program...
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Research essay sample on Nobel Prize Creative Thought
